A Worthy End
by Clear as Mud
Summary: A tribute to plagiarists everywhere.


It wasn't everyday that the two women found themselves in the same room. Something about family disputes, old scrabbling among cousins, that sort of garbage. It was even rarer to find themselves bound together and leaking streaks of tears and mucus over their gags. It hadn't happened before. But they should have seen it coming. Family disputes aside, their own personal histories weren't clean, and they certainly had their fair share of enemies bound by nothing but enmity.

But why a jungle?

The hot mists clung to the floor and foliage like a nebulous fungus and seemed to leach the oxygen from their lungs. It was harder still for them to find the energy to tug at their bindings. Chains. All of it was chain, thickly woven and somehow coarse enough to shred their wrists down to the tendons. As if these might be shaken away, a thick wedge of wood skewered them through the tree's trunk. The blood had almost stopped its flow, but the weakened muscles of their lanced bowels sent spikes of agony at every breath. Infection had taken root almost immediately, and the stink of putrid flesh cloaked them in a canopy of rot. The blood-caked tip of the spear poked through the brunette's middle. When conscious, she peeled her eyes open long enough to stare at it and contemplate the sort of acrobatics it might take to drive her skull through its sharpened head. She always passed out before the thought could incubate long enough.

Blood-soaked and sorry, they wept openly when aware. Swept from their respective pedestals on Earth and dumped into this alien wasteland of dense, muggy trees and blood-sucking creatures sampling their alien fluids, they wept for mercy. Doubtless these insects found them repulsive, but they fed as if nourished by shame alone. The splintered bark of the tree dug at their backs and tore the skin at every thrashing attempt to free themselves. It caught their once luscious locks and ripped them free in hunks. Everything dug in, every move ripped something out or apart, every vain twist of flesh rent something that clawed shrieking screams out of their throats.

Who were they kidding? They knew why it was a jungle. They couldn't weep it to each other through the gags, but oh, they knew. Mercy might have been shown, once. But their offences were numerous, their second and third and final chances shriveled away and dried up. This was their end.

Something huge and hulking cracked through the jungle's detritus and made no effort to smother the sounds. And why should it? It didn't have to hide from its prey, bound and punctured as they were, pathetic as they were. There was no need to hide from the pitiful criminals, these parasites. Each crack brought a fresh flow of tears and higher, keening cries from their throats. Such proud women, dragged so low.

It stopped in front of the blonde, who blearily paced her gorgeous crystal eyes up its length and tried to focus on its face. She couldn't. She comprehended the massive reptilian body, the show of its talons clacking just before her unfocused retinas. Her brain was fogged in misery and had little room for fear, but the terror took root nonetheless. The rushing pound of her heart had her various wounds weeping. There was a wet crunch, a squelch, and a pain so thick it broke her mind to even contemplate. Her screams ricocheted from every tree and rock and insect and reverberated back in her own skull as a cacophony of death. At her back, the brunette shrieked through her own gag and pulled on the chains hard enough to cut through her kin's wrists. Something cracked, and she thrashed through the pain, letting every link of chain and splinter of bark claw and dig at her as the creature's hand came free of her chest with the slick glob of her heart painting its hand red. She thought she saw it beat once before her vision grayed. The creature squeezed it and crushed every clot of blood out of the chambers before dropping the husk to the ground. The blonde's head swayed, bobbing to offer a drooling, blood-slicked gape at her crushed heart before a blackness clutched her limbs and dragged her down for the final time.

Still shrieking in her mindless horror, the brunette thrashed and kicked as snot dribbled and sprayed through her furious, panting breaths. Both wrists crunched and she felt it echo up her arms before the pain settled like fresh forged iron. Her voice cracked dryly; voice gone, she whimpered airily as the creature took its place before the criminal. She had no time for a sassy attempt at defiance. Its foot came up below the spearhead with enough force to crunch her spine like brittle kindling. The legs that had been diligently keeping her upright fell numb, and she slumped, pinned upright only by the chains and the spear. She couldn't scream, but she felt the raw agony of it well in her throat, unspent, useless. Its hand clutched the haft of the spear and yanked it clean through her guts and the moist, ragged wood of the tree in two clean jerks. Even with her shattered spine, she felt the ripping of her flesh as the spear abraded her intestines and scraped past a slew of organs that, in her clouded brain, she could not name. She fell to the ground, hanging only by the chains on her broken wrists. Gray flecks dotted her vision before something sharp burst through her sternum and pierced through the one organ she could name.

With a disgusted snort, the arbitrator retracted the red-slicked spear from the corpse. He turned without a thought of a trophy. Honorless beasts such as these had no place in his display case, and he had no desire to soil his boots with the mash of their crushed skulls. He'd allowed a cycle for their suffering, for them to pray to their gods and seek penitence, before his patience had ended and his need for justice called his blood to action.

They would feed the jungle, he decided. It was as fitting a fate as he could imagine, nourishing an ecosystem on the remains of parasites, of plagiarists. Really, he chuffed. Such a preventable crime, and yet so harmful to society. The worthless creatures would at last find a use in death.

* * *

Someone is going to hate me for this. Maybe several someones. But since this is still happening, despite several attempts at reporting the issue, and has cost several of us writers our peace of mind, I thought a different tactic ought to be used. I'll probably take this down once this crap settles.


End file.
